Fragment size distributions in brittle deformed rocks

Creep: Time‐dependent brittle deformation in rocks

Evaluating magnetic lineations (AMS) in deformed rocks

Magnetic lineation in rocks is given by a cluster of the principal axes of maximum susceptibility (Kmax) of the Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) tensor. In deformed rocks, magnetic lineations are generally considered to be the result of either bedding and cleavage intersection or they parallel the tectonic extension direction in high strain zones. Our AMS determinations, based on a v...

Mechanisms for fragment formation in brittle solids.

A model for mode I fracture in brittle materials is used to elucidate the relationship between characteristics of the fracture process, such as crack roughness, fractal dimension, and fragment size distributions. It is shown that different roughness in local regions of the crack path leads to different mechanisms for the subsequent fracture of those regions. Formation of two robust power laws f...

Brittle creep, damage and time-to-failure in rocks

We propose a numerical model based on static fatigue laws in order to model the time-dependent damage and deformation of rocks under creep. An empirical relation between time-to-failure and applied stress is used to simulate the behavior of each element of our finite element model. We first review available data on creep experiments, in order to study how the material properties and the loading...

A micromechanics-based elastoplastic damage model for quasi-brittle rocks

This paper presents a micromechanics-based elastoplastic damage model for quasi-brittle rocks in compression stress state. The plastic strain is considered to be related to frictional sliding along microcracks and inherently coupled with damage evolution. By following a homogenization procedure, we first determine the free energy for the matrix-cracks system. The thermodynamic force associated ...